OUR NEW COOKS! "Too many cooks"--"the proverb's something musty." We have just had another new Cook; but too sure I am that, like the whole tribe of Cooks that enter our family, she will never pass the boundaries of the cognomen "New Cook." All our Cooks have been _new_. The oldest one we have ever had, in my remembrance, was a prodigy of a month's service in our kitchen; and although it must be confessed that, even during that period, she was twice threatened or _warned_ by my mother, her long stay was astonishing to us all. Compared with her predecessors she was quite a fixture in the house. It would take up "too much room in the Omnibus," to detail one half of the discrepancies of our Cooks. The great Cook who circumnavigated the globe--who traversed seas remote, and explored lands unknown, found no such curiosities among the monsters of the great deep, or the uncivilized eccentrics on shore. One, as my maiden aunt delicately observes, becomes quite "inebriated"--off she goes; another has "followers"--off she goes; another increases her "kitchen stuff" at the expense of the fat of the meat, which she cuts off to a nicety (and my father is particularly fond of fat)--off she goes--another cannot cook a potato--off she goes; another forms a clandestine match with the butler after a week's intimacy--off she goes--he too falling a victim and losing his place. When I say that my mother seldom looks over the first offence, I explain pretty clearly how it is that every week finds us with a new cook. On the day of their engagement my sanguine parent invariably tells us "she has found a treasure;" a cook with such a character--never drinks--no followers--so honest--can cook anything;--such a woman for making "made up" (sometimes called French) dishes, &c. In a few days this treasure of a cook turns out to be, without a single exception, the very worst we ever had to endure (for it rather singularly happens that each in succession is "the very worst").--"Oh, that dreadful woman!" is the cry. She boils what she should roast, and roasts what she should boil; she is a snuff-taker, and almost everything she cooks is supposed to savour of Lundyfoot or Prince's mixture. Off _she_ goes before we find out a fair half of her intolerable propensities. If it be but a chop to serve up, I like it served up in a style that I can depend upon. Underdone or overdone is of less consequence, so that I know beforehand, by experience of the cook's performances, _how_ it will be done. But this continual succession of "treasures" subjects us to a continual series of experiments.